Imagine you are a teenager in high school; you have every social media you could think of and you open up tiktok to see someone who had an extraordinary physique You look at yourself and wonder “why do I look like this; why do I not have as big of muscles as them, why am I not as skinny as them.” You start to doubt your looks. You compare yourself to people who have been working out for years or even work out everyday, but that’s not always the truth. There are people who have taken steroids to gain more muscle mass or people who have taken hunger suppressants like Ozempic just to lose a few pounds. On the other hand, there are people striving to gain weight or suffer from an eating disorder, but you don’t know that; you see someone who, in your mind, is better than you.  

In every year of life, there has been a standard on how people should look, ranging from tall with a higher fat percentage to below average height with less muscle mass. These people who fit the beauty standard were praised. A few 100 years ago, the most beautiful people would get statues and paintings made in their image to capture their beauty. Now more often than not, these beautiful people have a few million followers on TikTok or Instagram and get “cat-called” while walking down the street. Not only have we as a society changed the beauty standard so much, but we have also changed the way we treat people, normalizing making rude or uncalled for comments on people’s weight or looks, which is common with social media. 

Some people had a longing to look a certain way, an expectation of how they should look, and what they felt others wanted them to look like. A good number of people don’t understand that it’s better to be healthy. With the advancements in course medicine surgery, changing the way you look has gotten a lot easier than it was. From a nose job to liposuction, with everything constantly changing, beauty standards, and the force and push from others to hate your body and to change. The important thing is to understand what’s most important. That you, as an individual, are the only one responsible for yourself, take care of yourself, but don’t let what others or even society dictate how you feel about yourself.